Episode 1 is just me having a bit of practice at speaking for a camera, and editing my video on iMovie. I think I did alright for a first timer!

What I aim to eventually do, is episodes on my retro PC and console collection, and do LGR/ADG style commentaries on my personal favourite retro games.

The first feature (or story arc, I suppose) will be my project to change over all my consoles from using composite video to using RGB. I've started buying the connectors I'll need, and once I have everything, I'll cover making the cables, performing console mods where needed, and the differences in picture quality before and after.

Well, now that the video is in the wild, I throw myself at the mercy of the Internet. What do you think?

It's a start. Based on my own experience with Ancient DOS Games, here's some recommendations I have for you.

1. Write scripts. Yes, I know, to the vast majority of people who start a new web show, scripts are evil and they don't want to make them. But trust me when I say, without several years of practice and experience, this is the only way you will ever eliminate the uncomfortable gaps in your speech and you will be able to condense a lot more information into a smaller amount of time.

2. Volume balance. The music you run in the background when you're not talking is far louder than your vocal volume. Voice recordings usually end up much quieter than the typical volume levels of music and sound effects so you will need to lower the volume of such things so that it never exceeds the volume level your voice reaches. Always make sure to proof your final rendering before uploading to be sure everything works out.

3. The simplest way to eliminate flicker if you need to record a screen is to make sure that screen is an LCD. The flicker you ran into is a result of CRT refresh rates, which cameras will generally pick up due to the way they work.

As a side note, I actually have a calculator watch, though I never wear it anymore because the battery only lasts 1 1/2 years and replacing it always wipes all of the data stored, even when following the replacement instructions flawlessly. :P

I really like these RAW shows. They give you more time to absorb the moment.Yes other shows are packed with information but often I struggle to decide if I should listen to the comments or watch the video. Especially confusing if they cover different topics. But that's just me

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:I really like these RAW shows. They give you more time to absorb the moment.Yes other shows are packed with information but often I struggle to decide if I should listen to the comments or watch the video. Especially confusing if they cover different topics. But that's just me :)

Goes to show that everyone has different tastes. Even though I have a much lower viewership with ADG than Clint does with LGR, a few of my viewers have told me that they prefer my show over his.

Riffing though, (doing a show without a script), is extremely difficult. Not many people can pull it off better compared to having a script. I started scripting with Episode 16 of my show and the difference in my voiceover quality is VERY noticable! :O

I am kind of shooting for the "RAW" thing that Mau1wurf is talking about. I do have a script, kinda, it's more of a bullet list so I'm not yammering about things in a crazy order, like I would do in real life. Honestly, try to have a conversation with my IRL, it can be quite hard to follow.

I talk slowly in real life too, so what you're hearing WRT speech speed is just me, no amount of planning would change that. The long pauses are also partially due to my weak edit-fu. I closed up the gaps as best I could, but iMovie isn't the best tool in the world.

Volume is an odd one, iMovie has controls to automatically reduce the music volume while speech is being played. ("Ducking" they call it), but perhaps I missed enabling it on one or two of the voice clips? Or perhaps when I normalised the clips it came out wonky... I'll need to watch it beginning-to-end again. I did so before I uploaded it, but it was pretty late. Thanks for mentioning it, by the way, if nobody mentions stuff like that, I can't fix it!

Flicker, yeah, I figured an LCD would give better results. Medium-to-long term, I have a plan to buy one of those VGA capture cards like elianda has. But in the mean time, I've discovered that by twiddling with the camera's exposure settings, I can nearly eliminate flicker, so I'll be trying that out next time I need to record footage.

Honestly, I'm surprised my little vids have been received as well as they have. It's encouraging, thanks!

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:I really like these RAW shows. They give you more time to absorb the moment.Yes other shows are packed with information but often I struggle to decide if I should listen to the comments or watch the video. Especially confusing if they cover different topics. But that's just me

Goes to show that everyone has different tastes. Even though I have a much lower viewership with ADG than Clint does with LGR, a few of my viewers have told me that they prefer my show over his.

Riffing though, (doing a show without a script), is extremely difficult. Not many people can pull it off better compared to having a script. I started scripting with Episode 16 of my show and the difference in my voiceover quality is VERY noticable!

I think the only person that does a GOOD job of unscripted commentary is paul soares jr. He started doing minecraft tutorials back in beta 1.7 and has continued to this day. he also does play-throughs of some other series. Most notibaly his DAY-Z which caused my wallet to open and me actually buy the game.

All my videos are unscripted. Main reason is becaue it is a hobby for me and if you want to make it appear more professional I would have to invest heaps more time and money (for some more advanced capturing and authoring software).

Gemini000 will know all about this I usually just throw it together in Movie Maker and then crunch it with Handbreak and I am done. I have a modern i5 so encoding takes a few minutes tops.

I don't have any monitors per-se, but I do have a reasonably high-end TV that I intend to use. I have a 25" Sony broadcast monitor, but that's permanently attached to my Neo-Geo MVS cabinet.

Episode 3 is uploading as we speak, I've done a quick rundown of my console and console-game collection. Not a big collection compared to some out there on Youtube, but I'm not really a completionist, I just buy the games that I like, or that I want to play.

My RGB to YUV box should arrive this week, so I can start actually making my cables up and testing them. Making footage all along the way, of course!

Stull wrote:It's always fun to journey through others' nerd caves. Do you notice much video degradation using so many A/V switches right now? Also, you seem to be lacking Shining Force for your Mega Drive.

Surprisingly no, before I had the switch boxes I used to just swap the leads around, then when I got the boxes I was prepared for a loss of quality, but it turned out pretty good. Going to SCART RGB with only one level of switching will be even better!